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H Sermon 

Delivered h^ 

THE REV. WILLIAM E. BARTON, D.D.. LL.D. 
PASTOR 

in the 

First Congregational ChurcK of Oak Park, Illinois 
Sunday, October 13, 1918 




Printed by the Courtesy of 

Men of the Church 

Oak Park, IIHnois 

1918 



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To the Men Who Are Printing This Sermon: 

When I prepared this sermon, it was mine; when I dehvered it, it was yours; 
now you are printing it that it may be preached to others, and it is ours. Let me 
thank you for the privilege of joining with you in the proclamation of our common 
patriotism and our common faith. You believe, and so do I, that our nation is 
engaged in a holy crusade, a war to make peace possible and durable. We believe 
that we have a stern duty to perform, and that we must not falter till that duty is 
done. But we believe that we ought to do that duty without hatred and in a nobler 
spirit than that of revenge. God grant us a peace in whose blessings all the world 
shall share, and a courage to fight on till that peace is secure. 

W. E. B. 
The Parsonage, 
Sunday afternoon, 
October 13, 1918. 



aiffe 

Author 



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"They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when 
there is no peace." Jeremiah 6:14. 

"Through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through 
the blood of his cross." Colossians 1:20. 

"And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts 
and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7. 



Whatever impression these texts make upon us, this surely is plain upon the face 
of thera, that anything so vast and valuable as the peace which is contemplated in 
the word of God is not cheaply won nor lightly to be prized. The blood of Christ's 
cross is the unit of value of the world's spiritual peace — the peace of God which 
passeth all understanding. It is manifestly something deeper and larger than political 
peace. It is something more than the absence of war. 

Jeremiah knew nothing about antiseptic surgery. He had not heard that tetanus 
germs develop in wounds that are not kept open till they heal from the bottom 
upward and outward. But prophets and priests were healers in that day, and he 
knew that it was possible for a superficially healed wound to end in a fatality. He 
denounced as spiritual malpractice the cheap optimism which was not brave enough 
to probe evils to the bottom, but counted them healed when they were only scabbed 
over. He denounced the political and spiritual leaders of his time, who healed 
slightlv the people's hurt, saying. Peace, peace, when they had not removed the 
conditions that made peace impossible. 

Spiritual Preparedness for Peace 

Because I have much to say, and shall have time to say little of it, let me at 
the outset bring to you my principal thought, the one which constitutes the motive 
for the preaching of this sermon. 

The American people have met the first staggering test which the war forced upon 
them, and have met it superbly. There is coming now another test, in some respects 
more exacting. Can we meet the conditions of a victorious peace with calmness, 
self-control, and unfaltering devotion to the great spiritual ideals for which we 
entered the war? 

We entered the war in a state of military' unpreparedness; for myself I am not 
sorry that we did so. But we had a spiritual preparation for our part in the war. 
What we had witnessed for three years in Europe had given us national unity, 
clarity of vision, and time to formulate our definitions. We entered not only with 
moral courage but with spiritual poise such as the nations of our allies had not 
time to attain before the war burst upon them. But now, have we any such 
preparation for possibly sudden and completely victorious peace? To fail of pre- 
paredness now might be a greater calamity than to have failed then, as, thank 
God, we did not fail. 

—3— 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



"America ! America ! 

God mend thy every flaw. 
Confirm thy soul in self-control. 

Thy liberty in law." 

The Tidings of This Morning 

I assume that most of you have not seen the morning papers. I have never 
taken a Sunday paper regularly. It is not that I am certain that to do so is sin, but 
I count it pathetic that people should waste the few precious hours of Sunday in 
feeding their souls on the husks of sixty-four or ninety-six pages of what they have 
too much of during the week, and some of which they would be quite as well off 
without on any day. Sunday, with our homes almost strange to us, our children 
needing our companionship, and \vith good books inviting us which we have no time 
to open during the week, to say nothing of the spiritual privileges of the day, is too 
good a day of opportunity to be wasted on the Sunday papers. But the past few 
weeks have been so momentous, and events of such importance have been possible 
or actual, I have felt that I had no right not to know the last word that might the 
better fit me to interpret to my own soul and to my congregation the message which 
God gives to me. So, for a few weeks, I have been buying a Sunday morning 
paper. For your information let me tell you that the reply of the German govern- 
ment, not yet officially received, but picked up by wireless, appears on its face fully 
to accept the terms of President Wilson's note, and to bring the possibility of peace 
well above the horizon. 

When I announced this subject last Sunday, I did not know that Germany would 
on that very day ask for peace. But it came to me while I was in the pulpit as 
a kind of inspiration that the week which began with last Sunday would bring 
to the world some mighty movement looking toward peace, and that it was none too 
early to define its spiritual implications. So I announced this topic. The next 
morning I learned that on that very day Germany had sent forth a request for an 
armistice. 

I wondered just how President Wilson would answer that note. Two of the 
three points in his reply I guessed in advance. That is, I felt sure that after his 
reply to the Austrian note of September 16, telling that government that he would 
discuss peace only on the basis which the United States had already laid down in 
the president's fourteen conditions, he could not say no when Germany professed to 
accept those terms; and on the other hand he would not wholly accept the overture 
till he was assured that Germany agreed to those conditions definitely and not merely 
as points for discussion. I judged that he would make a condition that Germany 
should evacuate all invaded territory. But it had not occurred to me that he would 
add to the suavity of a Virginia gentleman the astuteness of a down-east Yankee 
and put his answer in the form of questions. Still less did I guess that he would say 
to Prince Maximillian, "I want to know whether you represent anyone worth talking 
to, or only the Kaiser." 

Let me tell you the substance of Germany's reply as it is printed this morning. 

The President's Three Points and Germany's Reply 

President Wilson's first question was: 

Does the Imperial Chancellor mean that the imperial German government 
accepts the terms laid down by the President in his address to the congress of the 
United States on the 8th of January last and in subsequent addresses, and that its 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



object in entering into discussions would be only to agree upon the practical details 
of their application? 

The German Government replies: 

The German government has accepted the terms laid down by President Wilson 
in his address of January 8 and in his subsequent addresses on the foundation of a 
permanent peace of justice. Consequently, its object in entering into discussions 
would be only to agree upon practical details of the application of these terms. 

Mr. Wilson then laid down his affirmation on the evacuation of conquered 
territory: 

The President feels bound to say with regard to the suggestion of an armistice 
that he would not feel at liberty to propose a cessation of arms to the govern- 
ments with which the government of the United States is associated against the 
central powers, so long as the armies of those powers are upon their soil. The 
good faith of any discussion would manifestly depend upon the consent of the 
central powers immediately to withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded 
territory. 

To this the German Government replies fully accepting the condition and asking 
the President to secure the appointment of a mixed commission to arrange it: 

The German government, in accord with the Austro-Hungarian government for 
the purpose of bringing about an armistice, declares itself ready to comply with 
the propositions of the President in regard to evacuation. The German government 
suggests that the President may occasion the meeting, of a mixed commission for 
making the necessary arrangements concerning the evacuation. 

Then the President puts what must have been to the Kaiser a very humiliating 
question : 

The President also feels that he is justified in asking whether the Imperial 
Chancellor is speaking merely for the constituted authorities of the empire who 
have so far conducted the war. He deems the answer to these questions vital from 
every point of view. 

To this the Imperial Chancellor answers that he represents not merely the Kaiser. 
but the great majority of the Reichstag, which represents the people of Germany: 

The present German government, which has undertaken the responsibility for 
this step toward peace, has been formed by conferences and in agreement with the 
great majority of the Reichstag. The Chancellor, supported in all of his actions 
by the will of this majority, speaks in the name of the German government and of 
the German people. 

Thu Brings Peace Visibly Nearer 

I assume that this note will be scrutinized very closely not only in Washington, 
but in London, Paris and Rome, and if there is any reason to doubt that it means 
what it says, the points will be guarded that need to be guarded. But on the face 
of this document it looks as if Germany had conceded all that the President has 
asked as conditions of a negotiation looking toward peace. I do not suppose that 
any one has a right to assume that peace will come at once; it would be fatal to 
slacken our efforts on behalf of war. But this certainly is a long step toward peace ; 
indeed, it seems to me that we are much nearer to that possibility than I thought 
possible when I announced this theme last Sunday. 

However, the essential things which I have to say do not depend upon any 
accident in the day's news. Whether peace comes soon or late, it is coming; and 
without slackening in any degree our pressure to win the war, we must prepare our 
souls for peace, I am not discussing any of its diplomatic aspects, nor attempting 
to define any of its political or military conditions. I am only seeking to consider 
with you its spiritual implications. 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



The world that for more than four years has been engaged in the deadliest war 
of history discerns with gratitude and joy the first real promise of peace. When it 
is to come and precisely how it is to come are questions which belong to authorities 
military and diplomatic, but some of the underlying principles of any peace that 
can make the world secure lie within the sphere of spiritual definition. 

The Cost of War 

It is easier to compute the cost of war than the price of peace. The statisticians 
of the world are already busy and breaking their adding machines in the effort to 
compute the billions of dollars which the world has already paid and must here- 
after pay as the pecuniary cost of the war. When they have done their best their 
computation will be incomplete. The indemnity may be assessed against Germany, 
but the whole world will have to turn in and pay the cost. It will impoverish the 
earth for the next hundred years. But if this were all we could view it with some 
degree of calmness. The cost to humanity has been greater. 

Think for a moment what the war has cost outside the easy reckoning of the cash 
register. The universities of Europe are practically non-existent. Cambridge, Ox- 
ford, Edinborough, Paris, Berlin, Heidelberg and the rest are virtually in a state of 
suspended animation. Their quadrangles have become training grounds, their 
dormitories hospital wards, their laboratories fields for military investigation. Science 
has practically gone out of business, excepting as it relates to matters adjunct to the 
war. Musicians and artists and poets of all nations, patriotic in their ideals, and 
quick to respond to their higher emotions, have been among the first to answer the 
call to arms, and fatalities among them have been many. Research work has been 
all but abandoned. The work of translation of serious books on subjects other than 
war has virtually been discontinued. Not for a generation will it regain the place 
which it occupied in 1914. 

The Cost to International Confidence 

Worst of all, has been the cost to international faith and confidence, for which we 
must hold Germany primarily responsible. Her moral bankruptcy has brought down 
upon her not only the wrath of other nations, but the amazed sorrow of all who 
trusted her. 

In some aspects, the saddest thing about it was Germany's inability to under- 
stand in advance what would be the attitude of the rest of the world with reference 
to her acts of aggression. She violated the Hague Convention by her submarine 
piracy, her foul work of assassination by poison gases, her bombardment of un- 
defended cities, her ruthless invasion of neutral territory, and the moral appraisal 
which she put upon her own covenants when she described her treaties as scraps of 
paper. The world will never cease to be thankful that other nations refused to 
accept her estimate of her own and their moral obligations. Germany under- 
estimate dthe moral courage of little Belgium; she underestimated the power of 
resistance in the soul of sunny France; she underestimated the might that was 
represented by the "contemptible little army" of Great Britain ; most fatally of all she 
underestimated what she had to encounter and could not overcome in the moral 
heroism of the United States. 

Germany's Self-Delasion 

As late as July, 1918, the German Government was placarding the empire with 
a lurid poster, headed "Can America's entry make a decision in the war?" The 
answer was given in sections in the picture below. On the left was an enormous 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



Russian soldier and, standing side by side with him but very diminutive in com- 
parison. Uncle Sam, holding up a placard announcing Iiis intention to send from 
one to two million men into Germany. A pigmy American soldier representing the 
impossible million contrasted with the big bulk of the Russian soldier. These legends 
adorn this part of the cartoon. "Russia's army of millions could not down Ger- 
many!" "Russia used up altogether 15,000,000 men in vain! America threatens to 
send transports of one to two million men; but it cannot ship them! It is impossible 
for America to send and fit out in time for the European war a suitable and 
sufficiently large army and provide it with the necessary reinforcements." On the 
right hand side was the picture of a great battleship, representing England's 
200,000,000 of gross tonnage, and beside it Uncle Sam with his little navy under his 
arm aggregating 3,000,000 gross tons, together with the confident statement that 
the U-boats were sinking twice as rapidly as England and America could rebuild. 
Across the bottom of the picture was a fleet of 25 ships of 2,000 tons each with a 
statement that all these would be necessary to transport a single regiment and its 
supplies, and that starving France would insist that America's limited sea power 
be used in transporting food for her population rather than an army to consume it. 
In the middle of the picture and across the top is a kind of map, showing that it is 
200 times farther from New York to Europe than from London to the shore of 
France. The wide space between is decorated in the picture with German sub- 
marines, and transports sinking in flames; while the legend across the top cheerfully 
proclaims "Opportunity for the German U-boats." In the lower right hand corner of 
this part of the picture is a bursting bomb-shell with marks of erasure across the 
names of Serbia, Montenegro, Italy, Roumania, Russia and Belgium, and the German 
people were invited to contemplate with great glee the sure process of writing 
"America" next in the list and merrily blowing it to pieces. 

The War Must Not End Till It Ends Righteously 

General Hindenburg announced about the first of March his purpose to be in 
Paris on the first of April. He set the right date for it. But what shall we say of 
the moral stupidity of a nation which as late as July of 1918 could interpret 
America's entrance into the war in terms of this poster? Germany believed that 
America was so immersed in money-making she would never go to war, or that if 
she entered the war her distance from the scene of conflict and her devotion to 
the ideals of peace would make her an easy victim, but America is all the more 
dangerous because she loves peace. There is a terrible verse in the book of Revela- 
tion, which speaks of "the wrath of the Lamb." America did not go to war to 
avenge the sinking of the Lusitania, but all the waters of the Atlantic will not suffice 
to wash avr-ay the guilt of that foul deed until America has assurance that it can 
never happen again. 

What a terrible awakening Germany has had! Tliere are about two millions of 
Americans now confronting her, and from their first entrance upon the field at 
Chateau Thierry they have shown themselves heroes. 

Does Germany want peace now? I confess that I had not expected a note as 
straightforward as her note appears to be. I expected that she would equivocate 
and endeavor to avoid a direct issue till winter had set in, hoping thereby to gain 
time for more favorable terms. Perhaps some diplomatic subtlety lurlcs in her 
apparent frankness; certainly she must not wonder if we suspect it; but I am dis- 
posed to think that she has begun to read the handwriting upon the wall, and that 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



however insincere at heart she realizes that she must bend the knee and ask for 
peace on terms as generous as her enemies may be disposed to grant her, hoping espe- 
cially for clemency from the United States. 

No earnest desire of ours for peace must deprive us of the compelling sense of 
duty to fight on till Germany has learned her lesson. She must come to a new 
knowledge of her own heart and of her standing among nations. She knows 
machinery and mechanics, but she does not know men. The war has cost too 
much to end now if it brings not with its ending assurance that it has not been fought 
in vain. 

The Cost of Peace to Germany 

What now will be the price of peace? It will involve heavy cost and tremendous 
strain upon our financial and economic system; tremendous problems will be in- 
volved in the demobilization of our army, the readjustment of our industries, the 
shrinking of our inflated values. 

What will be the price to Germany? She will have to reckon first with her 
enormous war debt. She may be driven to democracy as a pretext for its repudiation. 
It will involve a terrible reckoning with her own people. The day may come when 
the population of Berlin will march in triumphal procession down the Sieges-Allee 
or Avenue of Victory and pull from their pedestals the thirty-two marble statues of 
Prussian rulers, which look like a job lot purchased on a bargain counter at a ten- 
cent store. Germany's population has been trained in submission and may continue 
to kiss the hand that smites it, but it is entirely within the range of possibility that 
the worst things that are to happen to Germany's rulers are not to be found in 
anything that the Allies will do to them, but in the terrible reckoning which she must 
meet at the hands of her own people. 

If I had my way, do you know what I would do? I would not tear down any of 
Germany's really noble temples or works of art. I would wreck no vengeance on 
her cathedrals or her museums or universities. But I would like to see that boastful 
avenue reconstructed. I have traveled it with no higher sentiment than resentment 
at its vulgar boastfulness; but I have stood in Paris before the statue of Strassburg 
among the cities, Strassburg, draped in mourning because lost to France in that 
same war which Germany so boastfully remembers, and that has moved me. I 
would permit the French to march along the Sieges-Allee, and pull down the monu- 
ment to Victory at its further end. I think the French have earned that right. As 
for the thirty-two statues inclosed with semi-circular seats, in each of which a dozen 
loyal Germans may sit at a time and contemplate with reverence the back of a dead 
Hohenzollern, I would leave the destruction of those to the German people, and I 
should like them to pull dowTi the whole rogues* gallery of the present kaiser's 
ancestors and consign them to the lime-kiln. But if they did not choose to do it, I 
would condemn the people of Berlin to no worse penalty than that of having to 
continue to look at them. They may have them if they want them; we do not. 

America's Share in the Spofls of War 

What is America to win with the war? We shall be poorer for one thing, and 
with comparative poverty we may learn thrift. Let us hope we shall be more modest. 
Any American who has ever traveled in Europe and has encountered groups of his 
fellow-countrymen in its various cities, needs no one to tell him why Americans have 
not always been popular in other countries than their own. We shall gain as the 
result of this war respect for some people whom we have been accustomed to despise 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



— not only little nations like Belgium, but the colojfed soldiers from our own country. 
A lesson in modesty will do America no conceivable harm. 

We shall have a new conception of the value of the physical well-being of our 
people as measured by the tests that constitute a man a good soldier, and we shall 
gain a new impression of what this means in terms of spiritual manhood. 

Another thing America will get out of the war, and that is the conviction tliat 
this country is not big enough for two or more kinds of Americans. We shall have 
no room for German-Americans or Irish-Americans, but only for Americans. 

Another thing we shall get out of the war, and that will be the conviction that 
America cannot attain her own destiny apart from her relation to the world. We 
shall have to have not only a new national unity, but a new international 
consciousness. 

What Is the Democracy For V/hkh Y/e Fight? 

We are striving to promote the progress of democracy as against autocracy. 
What is the democracy for which we v>?ant to make the world safe? Democracy is 
only incidentally a form of government; it is a philosophy of life, based on the- 
recognition of the inherent worth of personality. It involves the right of Germany 
to choose to be governed by a Kaiser just as long as thc<t Kaiser is acceptable to 
Germany and does not interfere with the right of other free governments to pro- 
mote their own welfare in their own way. It insists only upon two conditions. 
First, that the Kaiser himself as truly as the President of this republic shall rule not 
by a divine flat which authorizes Kaisers to tyrannize over any section of humanity 
large or small, but only by the willingness of some group of people thus for a time 
to be tyrannized over. The second condition is this: that no nation, whether it calls 
its chief magistrate a kaiser or a president, shall interfere with the equal right of every 
other nation, large or small, to promote the well-being of its own people in its own 
way so long as that way is compatible with the free exercise of self-government on 
the part of other peoples. 

What Kind of a Peace Do We Want? 

What is peace? It is something more and other than the absence of war. It is 
something different from the restoration of the conditions that existed in 1914. No 
status quo ante will satisfy the demands of the conscience of America, either at 
home or abroad. 

We went into this war unselfishly, yet it has become plain as daylight that had 
we not chosen to fight Germany when we did we should have had to fight her after 
she had conquered France and Great Britain, as it seems ce^■tain she would have 
done. We should have had to meet her with all our unpreparedness at a time when 
her forces had conquered the rest of the world piece meal. We should have had to 
fight her not in the trenches of Europe, but on the shores of America. We do not 
want the restoration of a condition in which she might later force us to decide 
whether we would best take time by the forelock and do unto her what she was 
determined to do unto us. 

A political peace is not all we want. If it were it could be had on many terms. 
China is at peace. The world once experienced the Pax Romana: it might have if 
it wanted to a Pax Teutonicus. We do not want that kind of peace, which is either 
a submission to tyranny or an invitation to war. We do not want a peace based on 
secret diplomacy, or planned to maintain the balance of power. We do not want a 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



p>eace grounded in mutual fear and nurtured in international distrust and maintained 
by mad competition in armament and battleships. 

It is a wonderful situation in which we find ourrelves at this hour. The German 
Chancellor addresses his note not to any of the European governments, but to the 
President of the United States, and afHrms that he has no doubt the other nations 
will agree. Undoubtedly they will, and wjil be safe in their agreement. Germany. 
too, if she has but sense enough to realize it. could have no safer course than to trust 
to the justice, stern but fair, of the United States. 

But let us remember that we came into this position of power partly because we 
entered the war late, and are able to cast our sword into a trembling balance — and 
also, thank God, the fact that we entered with clean hands. We shall come out of 
the war, still strong, still comparatively rich, still measurably unhurt. But little 
Belgium has nothing left, no territory, no capitol, no government, just her soul. And 
our Allies have suffered as we shall not need to suffer, and we shall have more than 
our share of the glor>', and very largely a deciding voice in the settlement. The kind 
of peace that the world is to have will not be wholly of America's making, but it 
will be the kind of peace which America believes ought to be made. 

Politically, the terms of that peace will be fonnulated in Washington, and made 
effective, possibly with modifications, in an international conference. But spiritually 
the conditions that make for peace and determine the character of the peace that 
is coming, are to be formulated in the souls of the people, in congregations like this. 
We are helping this morning to say what kind of peace the world is to have. 

It is just possible that America might make the peace more terrible, and its con- 
ditions more onerous, than they otherwise would be. Southern women, after the 
Civil War, were more bitter than Confederate soldiers. Indeed, I have seldom found 
bitterness in a Confederate who really did fighting enough to respect the men who 
(ought. We, who have fought least, might conceivably hate worst. We might be- 
come so arrogant, so unforgiving, as to make for greater wrath just because we have 
not suffered as others have suffered. God save us from that, the vengeful spirit that 
is generated by hate that never had opportunity to express itself adequately in the 
battle. 

Shall We Demand a Punitive Peace? 

It will be largely in the power of America to determine the kind of peace which 
the world is to have. We can enforce a punitive peace if we want to, and there vrill 
be many voices calling upon us to do so. Some punitive measures may be necessary'. 
but if so they should be dictated not by a lust for revenge, but by the needs of the 
world. If Germany is punished it must be not only because Germany deserves 
punishment but because it is best for the world and for her that she should be pun- 
ished. It may be necessar>' for us to place Germany under some restriction, com- 
mercial as well as military and naval, but for myself I am not willing to say that I 
will never buy any article that was made in Germany, or learn any truth that is 
to come to me out of Germany. I shall not be willing to determine my moral stand- 
ards on the basis of economic jealousies. The welfare of the world will demand that 
Germany shall work as well as the rest of us and pay her full share of the debts she 
has incurred and has compelled other nations to incur. If she is to work she must 
have reasonable opportunity for her industries, and her market for her products 
must depend not on the jealousy of her competitors, but on the world's need. 

—10— 



THE PRICE OF PEACE 



Peace as Secretary Lansing Defines It 

One of the noblest utterances of recent days was that of Secretary Lansing in 
his address last Thursday night at Auburn Theological Seminary. Speaking in that 
Christian institution he uttered sentiments worthy of a Christian statesman. I wish 
to change the order, but to emphasize three things that he said. 

Let me quote first his word concerning stern justice. "Let us not forget that 
while stern justice without mercy is unchristian, mercy which destroys justice is 
equally unchristian." 

That is a true word and the time has not yet come to blunt the edge of the sword 
of justice by crying "Peace, peace when there is no peace." Nor has the time 
come yet to say how gentle we will be with Germany when she is on her knees, nor 
how cheerfully we will consent to give her all that she asks in the way of markets 
and raw material. 

(2) I quote second what Mr. Lansing put first: "The peace which is to come 
will not be a lasting peace if its terms are written in anger, or if revenge rather than 
the desire for strict justice and the common good is the underlying motive." 

That seems to be a noble declaration. If Germany were wise she would drop 
the sword this instant, and accept the just and generous settlement which the United 
States, though a participant in the battle, would surely safeguard in the principles 
of settlement. 

(3) The third fine utterance of Mr. Lansing was his declaration that "the new 
era born in blood and fire on the battlefields of Europe must be a Christian era in 
reality and not alone in name." 

I quote this, because it is the very thing which I had planned to say to you — 
because it is just what I have been saying to you. Over and over I have said, It is 
not enough that we win the vv'ar; let us win it worthily. I have said. We must not be 
content with defeating Prussianism in Germany, and thereafter establish anything 
like its spirit at heme. So on this day, when we wait again a word from Washington 
that shall define our diplomatic response to Germany's note, let me say what I have 
said so many times. Let us fight bravely and until we win what we went to war to 
win; but let us not forget that we entered in with high resolves and noble spiritual 
purposes, and let us maintain them till the war ends and write them into the treaty 
of peace. 

There has come to America in the last few months a time of solemn testing. Let 
us devoutly thank God that we have met that test and have come forth triumphant. 
Historians marvel that thirteen little colonies could have mustered an army to make 
America independent. They marvel yet again that in the days of the Civil War 
America should have been able to call an army from her fields to make the nation 
free and keep in whole and send them back to their homes again without terrible 
economic and social disturbances. The historians of the future will marvel yet more 
that America in 1917 and 1918 was able to muster millions of men, transport them 
across the sea, and, with her army of boys who had never known anything but peace, 
defeat great armies of Germany's best trained soldiers. 

But a moment of greater testing is coming. In the hour of victory, which is not 
very far away and which may be very near, may God give us self-control; may He 
grant us calmness of spirit; may He give us clear vision that shall discern the day- 
break of a hew civilization through the clouds and thick darkness. May He give us 
such greatness of soul that we shall be able to turn a deaf ear to all who will be 




THE PRICE OF PEA 021 547 559 1 



demanding revenge and international hatred. May He make us as modest in victory 
as we have been courageous during the conflict. If nations that have suffered more 
than we cry out in their agony for a peace that is based on hatred and a frightfulness 
of peace, may God give to America strength to stand for a peace whose corner-stone 
is righteousness. May He help us to build thereon with other nations a new temple 
of Humanity, dedicated to national integrity, international good will and the peace 
of God which passeth all understanding. 



—18— 




021 547 559 i 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



